26 January 2012 2:13 PM

Cold War Nostalgia, and a few responses

It is one of my greatest regrets that in my long-ago days as Defence Correspondent of Another Newspaper, I was abruptly pulled off a visit to the old Inner German Border by a silly executive. The British Army had happily agreed to conduct me along the extraordinary frontier which then ran between the two Germanies. I think that, with a bit of luck, I might also have secured a ride on the British Military Train which used to run daily between Helmstedt and Berlin to assert our right of passage between the British Zone of Occupation and the British Zone of Berlin. It was said that its dining car still sold meals and drinks at the prices of the 1940s, as its whole legal status was based on agreements from the time of Stalin and the Berlin airlift. For the same reason, flights from West Germany to Berlin in those days had to drop to 10,000 feet, because that was the height of air corridor agreed at that time. Of course, having put my kind hosts out by suddenly departing for what they regarded as no good reason, and so making them abandon elaborate arrangements they’d made for me, I could never revive the visit.

So I have always had a special affection for Anthony Bailey’s account of his own long ramble down the border, ‘Along the Edge of the Forest’, published back in 1983 and now a museum piece. Bailey is a very interesting writer anyway, and this is – if you are moved or diverted at all by such things - an unusually fascinating subject.

I read Bailey’s book hungrily when it first came out, and then turned to it again (for a long time it had been more or less lost in an obscure corner of my not-very-orderly bookshelves), a few weeks ago. It was so long since I had read it that I had even remembered the colour of the cover wrongly, as brown (the colour, after all, of almost everything in the Soviet zone of influence) when it was in fact green. My brother had recently given me , by complete coincidence, another of Bailey’s books, a reminiscence of his upbringing, and this made me all the more anxious to retrieve ‘Along the Edge’.

I saw the border from trains and from the air, and I saw, close to, its rather different equivalent in Berlin itself, but the actual demarcation was quiet different. In Berlin, for instance, the traveller in the East could approach quite close to the famous Wall, because it was impossible to hide it at the Brandenburg Gate. In most parts of the city you couldn’t do so, as there were internal barriers, but there was still this astonishing sight, a few hundred yards from the Soviet Embassy and the heart of ceremonial East Germany (which was quite grand, as the East had inherited the Unter den Linden, two Cathedrals, several superb museums and a lot of fine Schinkel architecture) there was this unmistakable thing, lower and broader than elsewhere, curving temptingly towards the Tiergarten in the West. I never saw it from the East without having a ludicrous urge to run towards it and leap over. I had the same daft impulse at the Panmunjom crossing between the Koreas, where there isn’t even a wall, just a line that looks absurdly easy to cross.

In East Germany itself, hardly anyone except border troops ever saw the inside of the great fence, with its mines (there were no landmines in Berlin) and its tripwire-triggered automatic guns. There was a three-mile-deep forbidden zone that most people could never enter.

Bailey applied for permission to see it from the East, and did eventually receive it, after he’d already finished his journey. He didn’t go, which I think was a great shame. Even the obstruction he’d undoubtedly have received would have made an interesting account, and my experience of travelling in East Germany itself was always very rewarding indeed. Not specially comfortable, though the first-class carriages of the old Deutsche Reichsbahn could be quite comfy, the hotel restaurants could be quite fun once you had got used to the compulsory communal tables, if (like me) you actually quite like heavy overcooked German dishes, and East German sparkling wine, Rotkaeppchen Sekt, was more bearable than you might have thought. And at night it was very, very dark and wonderfully silent, as Pyongyang is today.

I will always be grateful that I managed to see the lovely city of Weimar (and its neighbouring concentration camp at Buchenwald) under Communist rule, not to mention Dresden, Frankfurt and the almost indescribably haunting and beautiful city of Naumburg, with its unique cathedral. Nothing had been painted or much cared for since Stalingrad. The great wave of money which had Americanised west Germany had never arrived there, and so the traveller was able to see a much more German Germany, in which the rise of Hitler and many other things were far more explicable than they were amid the sparkle and luxury of the comfortable West.

Weimar, with the houses of Goethe and Schiller, and the (in those days) grand but shabby Elephant Hotel, now an unaffordable super-luxury palace, was a rare zone of beauty in a country which generally preferred ugliness, as Communists usually do. Its closeness to Buchenwald, which even in its wholly dishonest East German incarnation, a museum which cut out half of history, was enough to freeze the imagination and fill the visitor with a strange shame in being there to see such things.

Naumburg, whose cathedral contains some of the greatest sculptures ever made by human hand, was so melancholic it was enough to make you cry – under the grey sky, echoing with the sonic booms of Soviet MiGs, Red Army lorries ground along the cobbled streets and in the café the cakes were made out of potatoes and glue, and the coffee made of acorns. This is luxury, beyond the dreams of avarice, if your main interest is in finding out how other people live, how different life might be if things had turned out and how the world beyond your own shores is really like.

But back to Bailey. He covers much of the length of the border, which was not only a fence, but a ploughed strip, an anti-tank ditch, and then another fence, watched over by towers which (he observed) had been so badly built that many of them were falling down. He describes the lives of West Germans who lived close to the line, and also reveals a detail which I found particularly fascinating.

The actual East German border ran some way west of the fence. And in the often untended land in front of it, East German special troops (Aufklaerer, or Pioneers) often lurked (he had one or two close brushes with them). It was quite easy, if you weren’t careful, to wander into East Germany, be arrested by these silent, stealthy zealots, and taken against your will through concealed gates, into the dark heart of the DDR. Eventually, they let you go, but how could you be sure? The idea that this was a fence that could bite gave it an added fear, and reminded me a bit of a passage in the Pilgrim’s Progress where, quite close to the celestial city, a foul hole opens up in the hillside and some sinner is dragged off into Hell, just when he was sure he was safe.

Reading the book now, I find it has lost much of its old power because the fence is not just gone, but largely forgotten and unknown. Yet when I first read it, in 1983 or 1984, I could not have imagined that within five or six years the whole thing would have come to an end (and I was convinced even then that German reunification was inevitable eventually). What do we now think is permanent, that will be gone in ten years?

A couple of points. I should have said that the discussion of the renaming of Bombay can be found under the heading ‘Beijing, Mumbai etc’ in the index.

Why precisely is it ‘patronising drivel’ ( as someone calling himself ‘Mick’ says ) to state that children can be happy and healthy even if their parents are poor?

If I say I am not very good at driving I am not saying that I am actively dangerous to others. Nor do I agree with a critic (whose pseudonym is so silly I can’t be bothered to reproduce it) that driving cautiously is in itself dangerous. It may be inconvenient to people in a hurry, but it is by its nature safer than driving without caution. What is more, this person rather misses my implication, that people who do believe they are ‘good at ‘ driving are often in fact just good at being confident. They believe they can brake in time. They believe they can steer through that gap. They believe they can overtake in that gap. They believe they know what is round that corner. They think it will be all right to take that phone call or read that text. They believe that pedestrian will not step out, that cyclist will not wobble. A lot of the time they will turn out to be right ( though in many cases this will be because others see or hear them coming, and slow down, get out of the way or stop to let them by). But I can tell them all (having myself been in a serious road accident more than 40 years ago, though I still recall it in detail now) that in half a second their lives ( and those of several others) can be turned upside down by a tiny miscalculation. A couple of years ago a South Wales police force made an astonishing short film on the dangers of texting while driving, which managed to portray quite eerily the experience of a road accident, including the terrifying silence which falls immediately afterwards, before you dare to look and see what has happened , and before the pain explodes. Everyone should see it. To believe you aren’t very good actually makes you better. It is the only responsible thing to do. But of course it should be made much harder to get, and keep a driving licence. If it were, then we would have better public transport and better provision for bicycles.

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Interesting comments about "tenbelows". However much of a difference does it make though, in terms of time?

If I were do a long motorway trip at 60mph instead of 70mph, it would take me 35 miles of unbroken cruising to make five minutes difference. On single-carriageways (cruising 50mph instead of 60mph), it would probably be a greater mileage, given you have to slow down for traffic-lights, roundabouts, bends and so on.

So I'd have to do a long and clear motorway run, for it to make an substantial difference-- otherwise it just gives the illusion of a faster journey.

I don't mind getting stuck behind such tenbelows. The slipstream and reduced speed reduces my fuel-consumption. Besides: In contrast to using more petrol or diesel by driving faster, setting off in plenty of time costs us no extra money.

@ John Thomas - I'm more concerned about the moral responsibility of those who carry out life-threateningly dangerous overtaking manoeuvres just because they are in hurry, and/or they can't be bothered waiting.

Someone who is driving slowly, even over a long distance, is not morally reprehensible in any way, in my view, unless it is with the deliberate intention of causing annoyance to those behind him. Even then, the onus remains with the "overtaker" to ensure that it is safe to carry out the manoeuvre.

The fact that you get edgy if there is a queue behind you, and like to be overtaken is a consequence of

(a.) the rude, aggressive nature displayed by many drivers towards those who just happen to get in their way, and

(b.) the genteel, traditional British trait of not wanting to offend, upset or "put out" others.

@ John Thomas .
You sound a bit like Clarkson with his daily rant about caravans.
We all know these slow drivers exist .But still leave things to the last minute. So the moral of the problem is slow drivers speed up, those in a hurry slow down . Or leave with time to spare, simples!!

Beatpoet - slow drivers: I'm quite sure you're right, Beatpoet, certainly legally. But I do just wonder about the (moral) responsibility of people who drive very slowly over long distances, get a long train of cars behind them, and seem not to care at all (we're talking narrow, winding roads). I personally get edgy if I acquire a queue behind me (having a low-power car) and like to be overtaken ...

There’s a wonderful painting by Thomas Gainsborough called Mr. and Mrs. Andrews. It shows the well-to-do couple in all their splendour; he is relaxed, expensive rifle carried under arm; she sits next to him in her expensive blue dress. They are the aristocracy with time on their hands and they are keen for this fact to be known. If some artist were to produce this scene nowadays, who could be used to represent the new aristocracy: those that sit around all day enjoying their leisure time while others go out and toil in the equivalent of the fields? Perhaps my neighbours would make suitable models? They could pose in front of the large five-bedroom house that they own, leaning on the bonnet of one of their two cars, resplendent in their tracksuits holding a can of extra-strong lager (the type they so often drink while in the garden enjoying the subtle changes in the seasons). They would clearly represent the new aristocracy as they have plenty of time on their hands, others toil to keep them in the position they have become accustomed to, and they own most of the trappings considered necessary by modern society. Furthermore, they have plenty of time on their hands as for the past decade they have all been claiming benefits. Nice to see that years of struggle have merely resulted in a different set of scroungers!

"Maybe Peter Hitchens doesn't understand that when the relatively rich (who are doing perfectly well at the minute) moralise to the poor (who are getting hammered at the minute) and tell them how they should be living, it comes across as patronising. Maybe you have to have been on the receiving end of it to notice."

Mr Mick, I partly agree with that, and I also would be very slow to judge when somebody is poor or not. And yet...even if sensibilities are jangled, the truth has to be spoken by somebody. Otherwise we get into a game of euphemism and evasion. The sort of situation where no man can complain about feminism, and no white person can complain about multiculturalism. Besides, I think claims of poverty are often used by well-heeled ideologues, to further an agenda, rather than by the people suffering hardship or relative poverty themselves.

‘Guy Reid-Brown may be interested in a brilliant recent article by Peter Oborne, comparing two artists - David Hockney, 'a conservative painter' who can draw, is innovitive and respects tradition (which I think should really be a living thing) with Damian Hurst, a product of the 'recent past'. I couldn't put it better.’

Posted by: S Webberley | 27 January 2012 at 04:58 PM

You said it there, Sir! Hockney is not political and it isn’t a matter of politics per se – yet I remember clearly watching a 'Review of the Arts Year' studio discussion programme yonks ago on Channel 4, it must have been the 1980s – he didn’t say anything political and he was totally non confrontational, but he was the only one there who did not emanate a type of adolescent catch-all ‘Radicalism.’ I have never forgotten that.

"I suggest going 10 miles below the speed limit should be illegal, if you do it for, say, one mile or more (everyone needs to slow for a short distance, from time to time). Sadly, one encounters many who drive at 10-below for miles on end ("tenbelows", I call them), and it is too dangerous to try to pass them, and drivers further back get very edgy." writes John Thomas.

And given that speeding is virtually unpoliced how on earth would this be enforced?

No, the impatience of drivers who want to drive fast shouldn't be projected onto the drivers of slower vehicles. There may well be a valid reason for a car driving at 10mph below the speed permitted. Let's just remind ourselves that the speed limit is the maximum speed permitted, not a legal requirement. Further, those speed limits are pretty arbitrary and certainly don't take account of adverse weather or road conditions. There are many situations where it is perfectly sensible to drive below the maximum. Only last night I spent ten miles behind a car doing just under 40mph. We were on a twisty road in torrential rain on a very dark night, facing a constant blitz of blinding headlights coming towards us. Difficult conditions, but left to my own devices I would have probably driven faster than than 40. But that's irrelevant, it's the right of the driver in front to make their own judgements about the safe speed for them. And no, I didn't tailgate her or flash my lights, Sometimes there's nothing for it but to calm down, put the radio on and accept the situation.

Rather than bringing in unenforceable minimum speed laws, perhaps drivers who rush to blame everyone else for their inability to control their impatience and frustration should seek some anger management therapy. Now that would save quite a few lives.

The German Democratic Republic (sic) is probably the most interesting of all of the Eastern Block countries during the cold war on a number of levels. If anybody wants to read about normal peoples lives (if indeed anything was actually normal in the GDR), the wall, and the all pervasive 'state' that controlled them I can thoroughly recommend Anna Funder's book Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall.

Guy Reid-Brown may be interested in a brilliant recent article by Peter Oborne, comparing two artists - David Hockney, 'a conservative painter' who can draw, is innovitive and respects tradition (which I think should really be a living thing) with Damian Hurst, a product of the 'recent past'. I couldn't put it better.

Re frontiers I used to think something similar looking across from Corfu to Lake Butrinto and Saranda in Albania when it was run by Enver Hoxha and co., had no private cars and was a kind of Forbidden Land, mostly sealed off from the rest of the world.

Silence apart from maybe the odd cannon (yes, really) fire from the other side at night, lager and night-clubs in Kassiopi all around me.

Now I suppose Albania ended up as a kind of mass participation Pyramid Scheme and Greece a kind of European merchant bankers / Greece’s posher classes – run version of something similar?

Maybe Peter Hitchens doesn't understand that when the relatively rich (who are doing perfectly well at the minute) moralise to the poor (who are getting hammered at the minute) and tell them how they should be living, it comes across as patronising. Maybe you have to have been on the receiving end of it to notice.

In other news, I agree with him about car drivers - especially at zebra crossings these days. They're a nightmare.

@ John Thomas - you ask who would be at fault if a driver carried out an overtake because a car in front was going too slow, therby causing a pile-up. That's easy - it would be the fault of the driver carrying out the overtaking manoeuvre. It's encumbent on him to ensure the road is clear before carrying out such a manoeuvre. I can virtually guarantee you the courts and the insurance companies will see it that way. Any attempts to blame the driver of the slow-moving car are just bogus - just because someone can't be bothered waiting behind a slow-moving vehicle, frustrating though it may be, doesn't excuse them to drive like a maniac.

Apparently the East Germans call this nostalgia for the Cold War era "Ostalgie". I like that.

There was a pleasing symmetry about the capitalism-communism, East-West opposition. Of course I was safe in Ireland but that's not to say I didn't spend many a childhood night lying awake waiting for the missiles to strike.

Peter Hitchens wrote "The ones who think they are good are most likely to be a menace to others"

I find this true and often wonder about people who are self proclaimed good drivers. What often brings this them to this usually babyish conclusion is that they can wheelspin, dangerously overtake on 'A' roads and drive 100mph on a motorway then bore people to death about it. I once recall going from a company meeting to a country house for a meal for all involved, most counterparts in their company cars seemed to think it was a competition to get there first and drove like deranged oafs. I didn't partake and was greeted by smug sneers as I drove into the car park 5 minutes later, maybe they thought I was a big girls blouse? More fool them, who also thought they were 'good drivers'.

In reply to the person with a silly name .
Nice counterpunch there .Nowt like an illegal punch either , Where have I ever said I'm not a racist. Because by whatever PC rule of thum, I am. most Anthropologist are as well. Recognising the differences between races .Only those with a leftist agenda use it at the drop of a hat. Thereby diluting it, even when it may have some juice.
Whereas your silly name may seem a good idea to you, but still puts you in a laughable place. But then it might be racist , as it seems African or worse, an insult to Africans.
@ Mr Thomas
Indeed a very good thought . In America on certain roads that have a 65 mph ( the 55mph being so ridicuous ) they also have a 45 mph lower limit. Thus a band of 20 mph.

Communism is the Lefts unmastered past.The excuses are similar to that made by Germans about their past ie we did not know what was going on to claims of exaggeration or outright denial.Among Gulag deniers and apologists for Stalin is Seamus Milne of The Guardian.I always thought with a name like Seamus that he was a Republican Marxist from Belfast.It turns out he is the son of Alisdair Milne former director of the BBC,Public school Marxism lives on it seems.

The train that carried, amonst others, British servicemen to and from Berlin, operated on an overnight basis, if my memory serves me correctly. I made such a journey in 1958 and remember the strict orders about all window blinds remaining down until arrival in Berlin or back in West Germany. Apart from the shock of losing a 'friendly' game of basketball against an American team by some most embarrasing score, the memory that stays with me most was a short 'coach tour' to view 'Unter der Linden' and the other delights of the Russian sector. The level of comment on that bus journey was limited in the main to the usual ******* expletive followed by 'hell'...

Why precisely is it ‘patronising drivel’ ( as someone calling himself ‘Mick’ says ) to state that children can be happy and healthy even if their parents are poor?

I am surprised that you need an explanation. It is patronising because those who are poor do not feel the need to point this fact out, and those of us who are rich do like to be reminded that the poor are not all horrible to their children. It is so comforting for us that you pointed this fact out.

Guy Reid-Brown
Thank you for your post of at 10:21am
‘Every good man is free’. Really?
Do you really mean to tell us that a slave in ancient Rome or in the Old South of the United States who happened to be a good person was no slave at all, purely and simply because he or she happened to be a good person?
Probably, there is more personal freedom in a place where people are good than in a place where they are bad.
But surely it is going a bit far to say that freedom and goodness are one and the same thing.

With thanks for this fascinating piece on pre-1989 Berlin. I have immediately ordered 'Along the Edge of the Forest' via amazon. I wanted to ask what is the title of the book given to you by your brother, Christopher, also by Anthony Bailey?

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